Parnell Statue, O’Connell St

Charles Stewart Parnell was an Irish nationalist politician who served from 1875 as Member of Parliament in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and whose party held the balance of power in the House of Commons during the Home Rule debates of 1885–1890. Parnell was born in County Wicklow on 27 June 1846 and died on 6 October 1891 the third son and seventh child of John Henry Parnell, a wealthy Anglo-Irish Anglican landowner, and his American wife Delia Tudor Stewart of Bordentown, New Jersey, daughter of the American naval hero, Admiral Charles Stewart, the stepson of one of George Washington's bodyguards. Admiral Stewart's mother, Parnell's great-grandmother, belonged to the Tudor family, so Parnell had a distant relationship with the British Royal Family Parnell was a land reform agitator, founder in 1879 of the Irish National Land League. He became leader of the Home Rule League. Parnell was first elected to the House of Commons as a Home Rule League Member of Parliament (MP) for County Meath on 21 April 1875 in a by-election backed by Fenian Patrick Egan. In a bout of activity, he left for America in December 1879, to raise funds for famine relief and secure support for Home Rule. To abolish landlordism, he asserted, would be to undermine English misgovernment, and he is alleged to have added: "When we have undermined English misgovernment we have paved the way for Ireland to take her place amongst the nations of the earth. And let us not forget that that is the ultimate goal at which all we Irishmen aim. None of us whether we be in America or in Ireland ... will be satisfied until we have destroyed the last link which keeps Ireland bound to England". In the 1880 General Election he was elected in three separate constituencies and chose to represent Cork. In parliament, Parnell supported Land Acts proposed by Prime Minister Gladstone. As President of the Irish Parliamentary Party he worked towards achiving Home Rule for Ireland throughout the 1880's and 90's, but his efforts were thwarted by a series of scandals involving forged letters and his relationship with Katherine O’Shea. O'Shea was married to Captain William O'Shea. O'Shea had already separated from his wife Katharine O'Shea, but would not divorce her as she was expecting a substantial inheritance before the courtship began. The hung parliament of 1885 saw him hold the balance of power between William Gladstone's Liberals and Lord Salisbury's Conservatives. His power was one factor in Gladstone's adoption of Home Rule as the central tenet of the Liberal Party. The stress of those years proved too much for Parnell and he died aged 45 on the 6th October 1891, in the arms of his wife, Katherine. His funeral to Glasnevin cemetery was the largest seen since the death of Daniel O’Connell nearly fifty years previously with over 200,000 in attandance. Parnell greatly influenced the writing of reknowned Irish writer, James Joyce. He appears frequently throughout Joyce's writing. Most notably in the Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Parnell is mentioned in the Christmas Dinner Scene.